“It is not a famine as you know it,” said Nunyunnini, through Gugwei’s mouth, “although a famine will follow.”
“Then what is it?” asked Yanu. “I am not afraid. I will stand against it. We have spears, and we have throwing rocks. Let a hundred mighty warriors come against us, still we shall prevail. We shall lead them into the marshes, and split their skulls with our flints.”
“It is not a man thing,” said Nunyunnini, in Gugwei’s old voice. “It will come from the skies, and none of your spears or your rocks will protect you.”
“How can we protect ourselves?” asked Atsula. “I have seen flames in the skies. I have heard a noise louder than ten thunderbolts. I have seen forests flattened and rivers boil.”
“Ai . . . ,” said Nunyunnini, but he said no more. Gugwei came out of the skull, bending stiffly, for he was an old man, and his knuckles were swollen and knotted.
There was silence. Atsula threw more leaves on the fire, and the smoke made their eyes tear.
Then Yanu strode to the mammoth head, put the cloak about his broad shoulders, put his head inside the skull. His voice boomed. “You must journey,” said Nunyunnini. “You must travel to sunward. Where the sun rises, there you will find a new land, where you will be safe. It will be a long journey: the moon will swell and empty, die and live, twice, and there will be slavers and beasts, but I shall guide you and keep you safe, if you travel toward the sunrise.”
Atsula spat on the mud of the floor, and said, “No.” She could feel the god staring at her. “No,” she said. “You are a bad god to tell us this. We will die. We will all die, and then who will be left to carry you from high place to high place, to raise your tent, to oil your great tusks with fat?”
The god said nothing. Atsula and Yanu exchanged places. Atsula’s face stared out through the yellowed mammoth bone.
“Atsula has no faith,” said Nunyununni in Atsula’s voice. “Atsula shall die before the rest of you enter the new land, but the rest of you shall live. Trust me: there is a land to the east that is manless. This land shall be your land and the land of your children and your children’s children, for seven generations, and seven sevens. But for Atsula’s faithlessness, you would have kept it forever. In the morning, pack your tents and your possessions, and walk toward the sunrise.”
And Gugwei and Yanu and Kalanu bowed their heads and exclaimed at the power and wisdom of Nunyunnini.
The moon swelled and waned and swelled and waned once more. The people of the tribe walked east, toward the sunrise, struggling through the icy winds, which numbed their exposed skin. Nunyunnini had promised them truly: they lost no one from the tribe on the journey, save for a woman in childbirth, and women in childbirth belong to the moon, not to Nunyunnini.
They crossed the land bridge.
Kalanu had left them at first light to scout the way. Now the sky was dark, and Kalanu had not returned, but the night sky was alive with lights, knotting and flickering and winding, flux and pulse, white and green and violet and red. Atsula and her people had seen the northern lights before, but they were still frightened by them, and this was a display like they had never seen before.
Kalanu returned to them, as the lights in the sky formed and flowed.
“Sometimes,” she said to Atsula, “I feel that I could simply spread my arms and fall into the sky.”
“That is because you are a scout,” said Atsula, the priestess. “When you die, you shall fall into the sky and become a star, to guide us as you guide us in life.”
“There are cliffs of ice to the east, high cliffs,” said Kalanu, her raven-black hair worn long, as a man would wear it. “We can climb them, but it will take many days.”
“You shall lead us safely,” said Atsula. “I shall die at the foot of the cliff, and that shall be the sacrifice that takes you into the new lands.”
To the west of them, back in the lands from which they had come, where the sun had set hours before, there was a flash of sickly yellow light, brighter than lightning, brighter than daylight. It was a burst of pure brilliance that forced the folk on the land bridge to cover their eyes and spit and exclaim. Children began to wail.
“That is the doom that Nunyunnini warned us of,” said Gugwei the old. “Surely he is a wise god and a mighty one.”
“He is the best of all gods,” said Kalanu. “In our new land we shall raise him up on high, and we shall polish his tusks and skull with fish oil and animal fat, and we shall tell our children, and our children’s children and our seventh children’s children, that Nunyunnini is the mightiest of all gods, and shall never be forgotten.”
“Gods are great,” said Atsula, slowly, as if she were imparting a great secret. “But the heart is greater. For it is from our hearts they come, and to our hearts they shall return . . .”
And there is no telling how long she might have continued in this blasphemy, had it not been interrupted in a manner that brooked no argument.
The roar that erupted from the west was so loud that ears bled, that the people could hear nothing for some time, temporarily blinded and deafened but alive, knowing that they were luckier than the tribes to the west of them.
“It is good,” said Atsula, but she could not hear the words inside her head.
Atsula died at the foot of the cliffs when the spring sun was at its zenith. She did not live to see the New World, and the tribe walked into those lands with no holy woman.
They scaled the cliffs, and they went south and west, until they found a valley with fresh water, and rivers that teemed with silver fish, and deer that had never seen man before and were so tame it was necessary to spit and to apologize to their spirits before killing them.
Dalani gave birth to three boys, and some said that Kalanu had performed the final magic and could do the man-thing with her bride; while others said that old Gugwei was not too old to keep a young bride company when her husband was away; and certainly once Gugwei died, Dalani had no more children.
And the ice times came and the ice times went, and the people spread out across the land, and formed new tribes and chose new totems: ravens and foxes and ground sloths and great cats and buffalo, each a beast that marked a tribe’s identity, each beast a god.